Woebot I’ve been way behind with my listening recently; still got a bucket of stuff (actually, some of it is in the old washing basket) I’m supposed to review, still got piles of albums and MP3s idly ticking over, mangling the datashields of my iPod… When DSM V finally comes out there’s bound to be some new disorder based around the triple anxiety felt 1) by having too […]
Thrill Jockey If there’s any kind of party going on, when the sun’s shining or no, if there’s barbecue coals warming up and a good-sized tent set up for entertainment, cornbread and sweet tea to start, grilled foodstuffs and harder liquor to follow, there should also be The Black Twig Pickers, a turkey in the straw and the ladies hopping high on a “Merry Mountain Hoedown” all the […]
Conveyor (N America)/Salvo (Europe) In 1987 I was trying my damnedest to reject the hateful and morally-bankrupt Thatcherite dream which seemed to be crushing everything in its path like some ghastly metal steamroller with Keith Joseph laughing behind the wheel, and instead recreate the psychedelic summer of twenty years before in Buckinghamshire’s green and pleasant pastures. And, with plenty of sunshine that year, the release schedules of Bam […]
Disinformation/Strange Attractor Press “I love the dead before they rise, no farewells, no goodbyes.” Alice Cooper’s “I Love The Dead” is surely the definitive romantic ode to the dearly departed, but he was by no means the first to spend his time romanticising those now six feet under. Nikolai Federov was one of the most radical thinkers in Russia during the Nineteenth Century. For a man who lived […]
Latitudes In the pagan world there are important times of year called the solstices and also various moon and planetary cycles that affect mankind on his journey around the shining orb of the sun. Sometimes musicians from ancient tribes would tap into these energy patterns and create music to conjure up atmospheres, forms and shapes of the elder gods who once resided here. Sylvester Anfang II’s music over […]
Autostatic “It sounds like someone flushing a magical toilet over and over” – this courtesy of my dear partner. She then mimed flushing a toilet for a bit, did a puzzled face, then decided it was the Victorian style of toilet with the flush you have to stand up for, rather than lean towards the cistern. Which piques any of the adjectives I could throw at it. I […]
Mute Problem the first: a month or so really isn’t enough time to deal with this. What I really wanted was a properly stodgy, fagend cash-cow studio slurry. Selfish, but it’s much easier to go ‘while there’s highlights on discs 2 and 3, ultimately it’s for the Can fanatic’. The review writes itself. Of course, that’s not the case, and I’m left with an album that’s better than […]
Mute The turn of the century saw an explosion of underground musical activity over in the states( especially in New York, and Brooklyn in particular) The bands that were part of this supernova also seemed to defy expectations by shape shifting at a rapid rate (think Black Dice, Animal Collective, Gang Gang Dance), and it was almost impossible to predict what an outfit’s next album or EP would […]
Desire Path Totally loving the artwork for this one, starring into the complexity, that smokey hair appearing to be shifting with the drone, a mild perfumed aroma slipping your nostrils as the sound cascades like some oriental music box fringed by minimalist chimed sentinels. The sombre pace is totally captivating, lingering on the sustain, that Shruti box’s constant reverberation digging deep in your consciousness lit by pin-pricks of […]
Koko, London 12 June 2012 Been wrapped up in the awesomeness of NWW/SunnO)))‘s collaboration [post=sunnnww text=”The Iron Soul of Nothing”] since New Year, so naturally, I jumped at the opportunity to see both groups together. I was secretly wishing for a stage collaboration of sorts, but it was pretty clear, as Colin Potter, Steve Stapleton, Andrew Liles and somebody else I didn’t recognise on bass (was that Mr […]
Monotype The pairing of Eugene S Robinson‘s voice and Phillipe Petit‘s sound manipulations draws on the film noir rule of human nature red in tooth in claw as much as on Thomas Pynchon for this six-part tale of inhumanity and death (of which this is the first of a planned three instalments). Atmospheric and brooding, the conversational delivery of Robinson is laconic, with an underlying menace present throughout, […]
The Garage, London 3 June 2012 “I refuse to believe that Hendrix had the last possessed hand, that Joplin had the last drunken throat, that Morrison had the last enlightened mind.” – Patti Smith As Patti said “Everybody says it’s finished … art’s finished, rock and roll is dead, God is dead. Fuck that!” As Neil Young said, “rock’n’roll will never die”. And But I’m getting ahead of […]
Crammed Discs The sleevenotes talk about this band being derided for being from the poor part of town; . I can’t help but feel that this is Tanzania’s answer to Happy Hardcore. Moreover, all the songs are towards the pulmonary-antagonising side of tempos, and tend to get faster. They’re also handsome swines. And they appear to have a dancer with one leg. And they look cool as fuck. […]
O2 Academy, London 23 May 2012 Ah, the British summertime, the time for festivals, too much sport on the TV, beer gardens and BBQs. But not this year, for the past month it had rained everyday, festivals would have been mud baths, sporting events cancelled and beer gardens and BBQs were just a faint and distant memory as rivers of water run through the streets. Then the Ozrics […]
Staubgold The press blurb says “If Morton Feldman, John Cage and David Tudor had formed a rock band, they might have sounded a bit like this.” Now. Far be it from me to pick holes in press releases [and to be fair they were quoting a review of an earlier record– ed.] – everything needs a bit of fluff to buoy it up – that’s a bit of […]
Sub Rosa Timeless Waves apparently started life as a ‘sonic work’ for a multi-channel installation of some kind (though the notes are unclear as to whether it was a conventional performance or gallery deal). I can get a bit sceptical of these things translated to disc, but luckily, Erdem Helvacioglu’s done a good job of making it into a more album-shaped whole. It’s loosely themed around a set […]
Thrill Jockey After the, quite frankly, cheesy and banal efforts from Tortoise on their previous album It’s All Around You, it was understandable if one found themselves without their hopes raised for Beacons Of Ancestorship, released in 2009. However, it comes as a relief to report that this is a vast improvement on the album beforehand; and is also a work that sees the band branching out into […]
Thrill Jockey Tortoise’s fifth album, It’s All Around You from 2004, tells the listener from the outset that they are in for no surprises whatsoever. On previous albums; and especially with the proceeding Standards, . Unfortunately with It’s All Around You they made it absolutely clear that they chose the most tedious and uninspiring one. The album cover is a dead giveaway as well, recalling the awful Athena […]